Half a Rogue - Harold MacGrath (phonics books TXT) 📗

our rights. Here's an inventor who, if we permit him to remain, will succeed in throwing two hundred men out of work. Bennington is making enough money as things are now. There's no need of improvement, such as will take bread and butter out of our mouths, out of the mouths of our wives and children. We've got to strike. That'll bring him to his senses."

At the conclusion he was loudly applauded.

Jordan stood up and waited till the noise had fully subsided. Everybody knew him. They had seen him stand up before, and he always said something worth listening to.

"You all know me, boys," he began.

"You bet!"

"You're all right!"

"Speech! Go ahead!"

Jordan caught Morrissy's eye. Morrissy nodded with bad grace. Jordan spoke for half an hour. He repeated word for word what Bennington had told him. In the end he was greeted with laughter.

"Very well, boys," he said, shrugging. "It's none of my business. You've never caught me lying yet. You don't know this man Bennington. I believe I do. He'll make good his threat. Wait and see."

"How much were you paid to attend this meeting?" demanded Morrissy, sneering.

"A good deal less than you were, Mr. Morrissy." There was a dangerous flush on Ben's cheeks, but the smoke was so dense that Morrissy failed to observe it. The men laughed again, accepting Ben's retort as a piece of banter. Ben went on doggedly: "I have in my pocket a permit to tear down the shops. Bennington gave it to me to produce. Look at it, if you doubt my word. There it is."

The men passed it along the aisles. It came back presently, much the worse for the wear. Some of the older men looked exceedingly grave, but they were in the minority.

"Anybody can get a permit to tear down his property," said Morrissy scornfully. "It's a big bluff, men. What! tear down the golden goose? Not in a thousand years! It's a plain bluff. And I'm sorry to see a decent man like our newspaper friend on the enemy's side."

"If I am on the enemy's side, Mr. Morrissy, it's because I'm a friend of every man here, save one," significantly. "You men will vote a strike. I can see that. But you'll regret it to your last day. I've nothing more to say. I helped you once when old man Bennington was alive, but I guess you've forgotten it." Ben sat down in silence.

"We'll proceed with the voting," said Morrissy.

Half an hour later there was a cheer. The men would go out Monday, if the demands of the committee were not acceded to. The meeting broke up, and many of the men flocked into the near-by saloons. Morrissy approached Ben, who had waited for him. No one was within earshot.

"What the hell do you mean by saying you were paid less than I was?" he said, his jaw protruding at an ugly angle.

"I mean, Morrissy," answered Ben fearlessly, "that you had better move carefully in the future. If I were you, I wouldn't accept any unstamped envelopes in Herculaneum It would be a good plan to go to some other town for that."

"Why, damn you!" Morrissy raised his fist.

"Stay where you are," warned Ben, seizing a camp-chair "or I'll break your head. Listen to me. I'm starting out from this night on to break you, and, by God, I'll do it before the year is over. This is your last strike, so make the most of it. You were at Schmuck's the other night, you and McQuade. There was a friend of mine on the other side of the partition. Unfortunately this friend was alone. I haven't got any proofs, but I'll get them."

Morrissy became yellower than his diamonds. Ben flung aside his chair and left the hall. He went straight to Martin's saloon. He found Bill Osborne alone at a table.

"Will they strike, Ben?" he asked in a rough whisper.

"Yes. I thought I might influence them, Bill, but I've only made an ass of myself. Two whiskies," he ordered, "and make one of them stiff. I told Morrissy."

"You didn't mention my name, Ben? Don't say you told him that I was on the other side of the partition!" Bill's eyes nearly stood out of his head.

"I told him nothing. How'd you happen to land in Schmuck's saloon, anyhow? Why didn't you telephone me when you heard Morrissy come in?"

"Oh. Ben, I was drunk! If I hadn't been so drunk!" Bill's eyes overflowed remorsefully.

Ben swore.

"And say, Ben, that fellow Bolles is back in town. He was in here a few minutes ago, drunk as a lord. He flashed a roll of bills that would have choked an ox."

"Where is he now?"

"Up stairs playing the wheel."

Ben shook his head. He had his salary in his pocket, and he vividly remembered what roulette had done to it a fortnight gone.

"If Bolles is drunk, it wouldn't do any good to talk to him." Ben sighed and drank his liquor neat. He was tired.


Chapter XIII


Regularly once a week Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene visited a hair-dresser. This distinguished social leader employed a French maid who was very adept at dressing hair, but the two never got along very well verbally; Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene insisted on speaking in broken French while the maid persisted in broken English. Such conversation is naturally disjointed and leads nowhere. The particular hair-dresser who received Mrs. Haldene's patronage possessed a lively imagination together with an endless chain of gossip. Mrs. Haldene was superior to gossiping with servants, but a hair-dresser is a little closer in relation to life. Many visited her in the course of a week, and some had the happy faculty of relieving their minds of what they saw and heard regardless of the social status of the listener. Mrs. Haldene never came away from the hair-dresser's empty-handed; in fact, she carried away with her food for thought that took fully a week to digest.

Like most places of its kind, the establishment was located in the boarding-house district; but this did not prevent fashionable carriages from stopping at the door, nor the neighboring boarders from sitting on their front steps and speculating as to whom this or that carriage belonged. There was always a maid on guard in the hall; she was very haughty and proportionately homely. It did not occur to the proprietress that this maid was a living advertisement of her incompetence to perform those wonders stated in the neat little pamphlets piled on the card-table; nor did it impress the patrons, who took it for granted that the maid, naturally enough, could not afford to have the operation of beauty performed.

A woman with wrinkles is always hopeful.

A strange medley of persons visited this house, each seeking in her own peculiar way the elixir of life, which is beauty, or the potion of love, which is beauty's handmaiden. There were remedies plus remedies; the same skin-food was warranted to create double-chins or destroy them; the same tonic killed superfluous hair or made it grow on bald spots. A freckle to eradicate, a wrinkle to remove, a moth-patch to bleach, a grey hair to dye; nothing was impossible here, not even credulity. It was but meet that the mistress should steal past the servant, that the servant should dodge the mistress. Every woman craves beauty, but she does not want the public to know that her beauty is of the kind in which nature has no hand. No man is a hero to his valet; no woman is a beauty to her maid. In and out, to and fro; the social leader, the shop-girl, the maid, the woman of the town, the actress, the thin old spinster and the fat matron, here might they be found.

At rare intervals a man was seen to ring the bell, but he was either a bill-collector or a husband in search of his wife.

The proprietress knew everybody intimately-by sight. She was squat, dyed, rouged and penciled, badly, too. She was written down in the city directory as Madame de Chevreuse, but she was emphatically not of French extraction. In her alphabet there were generally but twenty-five letters; there were frequent times when she had no idea that there existed such a letter as "g." How she came to appropriate so distinguished a name as De Chevreuse was a puzzle. Her husband -for she had a husband-was always reading French history in English, and doubtless this name appealed to his imagination and romance. Nobody knew what Madame's real name was, nor that of her husband, for he was always called "Monseer."

The reception-room was decorated after the prevailing fashion. There was gilt and pretense. There were numerous glass cases, filled with lotions and skin-foods and other articles of toilet; there were faceless heads adorned with all shades of hair, scalps, pompadours, and wigs. A few false-faces grinned or scowled or smirked from frames or corners where they were piled. There were tawdry masquerade costumes, too, and theatrical make-up. Curtains divided the several shampooing booths, and a screen cut off the general view of the operation of beauty. However, there were chinks large enough for the inquisitive, and everybody was inquisitive who patronized Madame de Chevreuse, pronounced Chevroose.

And always and ever there prevailed without regeneration the odor of cheap perfumes and scented soaps.

Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene left her carriage at the door, perfectly willing that the neighborhood should see her alight. She climbed the steps, stately and imposing. She was one of the few women who could overawe the homely girl in the hallway.

"Is Madame at liberty?"

"She will be shortly, Mrs. Haldene."

Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene passed into the reception-room and sat down by the manicure table. The screen was in position. Some one was being beautified. From time to time she heard voices.

"The make-up is taking splendidly to-day."

"Well, it didn't last week. I sweat pink beads all over my new muslin."

"It does peel in hot weather. I understand that Mrs. Welford is going to Dakota."

"He ought to have the first chance there, if what I've heard about her is true. These society women make me tired."

"They haven't much to occupy their time."

"Oh, I don't know. They occupy their time in running around after the other women's husbands."

"And the husbands?"

"The other men's wives."

"You aren't very charitable."

"Nobody's ever given me any charity, I'm sure."

From one of the shampooing booths:

"But you would look very well in the natural grey, ma'am."

"My husband doesn't think so."

"But his hair is grey."

"That doesn't lessen his regard for brunettes."

Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene shrugged her majestic shoulders and gazed again into the street. She always regretted that Madame could not be induced to make private visits.

A white poodle, recently shampooed, dashed through the rooms. There is always a watery-eyed, red-lidded poodle in an establishment of this order. The masculine contempt for the pug has died. It took twenty years to accomplish these obsequies. But the poodle, the poor poodle! Call a man a thief, a wretch, a villain, and he will defend himself; but call him a poodle, and he slinks out of sight. It is impossible to explain definitely the cause of this supreme contempt for the poodle, nor why it should be considered the epitome of opprobrium to be called one.

"Maime?"

"Yes, Madame!" replied the girl in the hall.

"Take Beauty into the